A friend of mine asked me for advice on how to help his 17-year-old son overcome his gaming and video addiction. Short-form social media videos and online games are designed to be addictive. Having been a former StarCraft addict and now the father of a 13-year-old boy, I know firsthand that nothing compares to the thrill of online gaming.
The problem is, these activities don’t just eat up time — they erode attention span. Games and TikTok-style videos constantly reward the brain with quick hits of dopamine. You get instant excitement, instant novelty, instant feedback. Over time, this rewires the brain to expect stimulation every few seconds.
That makes it difficult to sit through a class, read a book, or even watch a movie without reaching for a phone. The mind starts craving constant action. Anything slower feels boring, even if it’s meaningful.
This is why expecting teenagers to “just stop” is unrealistic. No matter how fun or beneficial the alternatives may be, those alternatives can’t compete with the rapid-fire dopamine loops of gaming and social media.
And here’s the key point: it’s not about a lack of awareness. Teens know they should be studying, playing sports, or sleeping earlier. The issue is willpower — and when your brain has been trained to chase fast rewards, willpower alone isn’t enough.
So talking them into it rarely works, and even then only for a few days at most. The only reliable way is to restrict access: put the phone away, turn off the computer. Of course, they will get bored. But boredom is valuable because it pushes you to be creative, to explore, to come up with something new. If the phone is always there to fill every empty moment, the brain never learns how to generate its own entertainment or ideas.
For parents, holding the line is hard because kids will push back, they’ll get angry, and they’ll try to negotiate their way around the rules. We use Google Family Link to limit his mobile phone time and app access. He’s allowed to use his computer only on weekends, for up to three hours per day. When he breaks the rules by secretly giving himself more time from his mothers phone or exceeding the 3 hour computer limit, we take away his phone or computer for a couple of days. During the school semester, he also goes on a digital detox before and during exams, meaning the phone and computer are completely put away for more than a week.
